Last Spy Standing

The local guesthouse had four rooms, the toothless old man who shuffled out from the back explained, but one had burned out and two were permanently occupied, so only one was free. He didn’t have a phone, but there was one in the next village, fifty kilometers to the east. Mitch paid in advance, took the key, then led the others down the hallway to the room the man indicated.

“This is it.” The door stood ajar. He nudged it open with his boot, his hand near his weapon, ready for ambush, ready for anything. Juarez’s men could have cut in front of them.

But as he looked around, it didn’t seem they did. Nobody waited for them in there save a handful of cockroaches that skittered across the floor. A single bed took up most of the room, covered by a torn blanket that might have had bright-colored stripes at one point in the distant past, but was now beyond faded.

He could hear Megan swallowing behind him.

“Didn’t the sign on the front say LUJO? Doesn’t that mean luxury in Spanish?” Her voice was a touch faint.

He felt sorry for her. She was so far out of her element … “We have our own bathroom. And you’ll be in a nice hotel by tomorrow this time. Hang in there just a little longer.”

She nodded bravely.

He walked forward to the open door in the corner, and took in the small shower that probably had only cold water. The chipped toilet had no seat. The pipes were rusty, but none of them were leaking. And he didn’t have to worry about water quality as long as they had their filter bottles.

Not that Megan appreciated their good fortune—having a roof over their heads and all. Her eyes were unnaturally wide and brimming with something that looked suspiciously close to tears. Even Zak was looking around with a dubious expression on his face.

He couldn’t allow them to fall apart now. “Sit.”

They both obeyed.

“This is what we’re going to do. We’ll clean up then have a decent meal. Then we’ll get some rest.” He looked at Megan. “You should wait to report the attack until you reach a bigger place. The polizia in a village like this is probably one man. He won’t be able to do much. And he might even be in league with the bandits.”

Plus, he didn’t want any part of the police report. If they were together when she went to the authorities, the police would also want to talk to him and Zak.

She went a shade paler, probably remembering the attack, but she nodded.

He couldn’t let her think too much. “All right. Let’s get on with the cleaning up. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty hungry. The sooner we get ourselves in decent enough shape to go out and look for food, the better.”

Zak went first. He didn’t take long, then settled in front of an ancient radio bolted to the wall, trying to make it work while Megan took her turn. She didn’t loiter, either, confirming Mitch’s suspicions about the water being unheated. He was about to ask Zak, but then the bathroom door opened and she stood there wrapped in nothing but a worn towel.

His tongue got stuck to the roof of his mouth.

She had legs a mile long. Lean, pink thighs. Zak stared at her wide-eyed, with a stupid grin on his face. She tugged the towel down in a self-conscious gesture that nearly caused her breasts to spill out on top. She looked desperate and embarrassed, the hottest thing Mitch had seen in years. Or ever.

Stop staring, get moving, he told himself, and after a few seconds he actually did it.

He moved to grab his gun off the dresser, but she moved toward her bag on the bed at the same time, getting between him and his weapon.

In nothing but a towel.

Which would have been just fine—more than fine—if she were a different sort of woman, if they were alone and he wasn’t in the middle of a clandestine mission.

He practically ran for the bathroom, needing that cold shower ASAP.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” he called through the closed door, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

He peeled off his clothes, stepped into the shower and let the cold spray hit his head. Exactly what he needed. He tried not to think of Megan Cassidy in that flimsy towel, those legs or those wet, soft locks framing her delicate face.

Morning couldn’t come too quickly. She needed to get far away from places like this and men like him.

He quieted the little voice in his head that said he should put Zak on the military transport then stay behind and personally escort Miss Cassidy back home to make sure nothing bad happened to her.

That voice had nothing to do with her long, lean thighs. Rescue missions just ran deep in his blood. He couldn’t help it if his instincts were to rescue her, too.

She was the proverbial damsel in distress, a scared, lost little thing who’d gone through considerable trauma in the past day. She collected orchids in New Jersey. This was probably the first massacre she’d ever seen.

He couldn’t relate to a life that sheltered.

He was drying off when he heard a crash come from the bedroom. He didn’t stop to dress, just burst through the door without thought, ready for fighting. He swore viciously at the sight that greeted him.

Zak was tied up on the bed, a rag in his mouth keeping him quiet. Megan stood in the middle of the room, dressed in shorts and a black tank top, boots on, hair pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail, looking like the lead character in a kick-butt video game. A fierce scar ran from her ear to her throat, a pink line her tumbling locks had covered up until now.

All uncertainty was gone from her fiery amber eyes, all paleness gone from her face as she glared at Mitch and pointed his own gun at him. She held a matching weapon in her other hand.

Where did she get that from? “Put them down,” he ordered.

Instead, she stepped closer.

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?” She turned the question on him. “Definitely not a hiker from Panama.” She shoved one weapon into the back of her waistband, pulled a plastic cuff from her back pocket—one she had to have stolen from his backpack—then gestured toward the water pipes in the bathroom behind him.

“No.” He measured the distance between them, judging it too great to be covered in a single leap. He was going for it anyway.

Or not.

She squeezed off a shot that passed so close to his ear he could feel the wind of the bullet.

“Hey, all right.” He stepped back, knowing no help would be coming. In a place like this, people knew enough to walk away from gunfire, not toward it.

She tossed him the plastic tie. “The pipe.”

He took a step back, held his left hand up to the pipe and cuffed himself to it. He swore under his breath, not taking his eyes off her for a second. He’d been had. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

What in hell had he been thinking? But of course, he hadn’t been thinking at all. She’d short-circuited his brain the moment she’d stepped into that clearing.

He flashed her his most lethal glare. “The money I have on me ain’t worth it, honey. I’m going to track you down. That’s a promise.”

She gave him a cocky smile, keeping her gaze above his shoulders, then turned away, leaving him handcuffed and naked.

But if he thought this was about cash, he realized his mistake a second later when she untied Zak roughly and yanked him to his feet, not paying any attention to the boy’s muffled groaning.

“You let him be,” Mitch ordered on a voice that usually brought results.

She didn’t even bother with a backward glance as she shoved Zak out the door. The next thing Mitch heard was the door slamming behind them and the key turning.

The sound of a car’s motor coming to life reached his ears a minute later, as he desperately searched the bathroom for a tool that could set him free. Under his breath, he cursed Megan Cassidy—if that was her real name—a hundred different ways, each singularly inventive.